Urban Design Compendium

Case Study 010 - A spatial framework to attract inward investment

010 - Birmingham Big City Plan

Birmingham’s Big City Plan is a spatial planning strategy and development framework aiming to deliver transformational change in the city centre over the next 20 years. The Plan has a strong delivery focus and helps to provide certainty to developers and investors. It seeks to attract private sector investment to make Birmingham one of the top 20 most liveable cities in the world and to ultimately progress the city’s continued regeneration as a “global city with a local heart”.

The Big City Plan supports sustainable development by growing the number of jobs, homes and commercial floorspace in the central core. It also seeks to contribute to an improved quality of life by creating new and improved public spaces, giving streets back to pedestrians and bringing the cultural life and diversity of Birmingham to the heart of the city.

The Plan has been based on a careful understanding of the city’s unique cultural and spatial characteristics. The city centre has been described in seven quarters and the masterplan sets out visions for each of the quarters to deliver change. Each quarter has unique qualities which contribute towards the diversity and vibrancy of the city centre and are largely based on historic clusters of related uses and existing physical boundaries. There are five major projects that will help regenerate the city centre by providing 1.5 million square metres of new floorspace and creating over 50,000 new jobs. Furthermore, the masterplan identifies projects to deliver over 65,000 square metres of new and improved public space and 28 kilometres of enhanced cycling and walking routes. The masterplan also identifies areas to deliver 5,000 new family homes.

Currently at Park Central, the Council is working with private and public partners to deliver 1,800 homes of all types and tenures, with gardens or balconies, built around a 3ha park.

The Plan is a non-statutory planning and regeneration framework. The key principles of the masterplan are embedded in the Council’s Core Strategy that provides the statutory framework for achieving the vision and overarching direction to guide the future development of the city. Further design documents will be produced where extra detail is needed for particular parts of the city centre.